The SEOTuners Blog

Monthly Archives: June 2017

In the world of online advertising, a company’s name and reputation are crucial. Without a tangible storefront, everything a brand does to bring customers to their website is part of an important web that supports these factors. Link building is the proverbial string with which this web is woven, and is the foundation to creating and maintaining traffic.

What is Link Building?

When a brand uses link building, what they are really doing is collecting something like a list of referrals from other sources, pointing potential customers directly to their goods and services. Custom link building services are available to help corporate entities achieve this, optimizing their site for organic linkage on others that feels less promotional and more like a natural suggestion. A well-placed link on another website can generate a great deal of traffic, assuming that the site has its own sizable user base.

Not all link hosts are created equally. While having a secondary source promoting your product is always a welcome advantage in the world of business, those seeking greater traffic and enhanced revenue may want to consider the types of websites they are collaborating with before throwing links out into the world. Much like throwing seed to birds in the middle of an icy winter, if a site miscalculates how and where they advertise, they may see very little response.

The Importance of Relevance and Authority

When considering where to place links, a brand should think about what they want for their search engine results. Though the two may not seem correlated, they are interwoven in the same advertising web that supports any online presence. The same goals of search engine optimization should be applied to potential link hosts.

Relevance is essential. How relevant is a site to your own company's product or service? A trucking company would be ill-suited to host a link for a dance instruction studio, the same way an online search for a family restaurant should not yield a chemical company’s website as a result. Advertising on relevant pages and sites is important for ensuring that customers know what they're getting, upfront.

Authority is also important. While a company may have thousands of mentions on social media or local business promotion sites, it is the household name that will get the results they're after. When a recognizable figure assists in advertising, the same boost in customer confidence can be seen as when a search result itself holds similar esteem. People are more willing to patronize brands they recognize as reputable, so authority is an essential key to the equation.

So, which factor is more important? Arguably both, in equal turns. Finding a way to achieve both authority and relevance to your potential customers’ needs is the ideal situation, rather than sacrificing one for the other. This balance is one reason so many companies choose to utilize the tools of custom link building services, and bring a mix of reliability and situational relevance to their customers. In deciding to pursue both, they maintain their traffic flow and business standing, and continue to see gains in the marketplace of the future.

Receiving a Google penalty can come as a shock if you run a quality site, but there are a variety of reasons it occurs. Here are the steps to take to remove penalties.

Understanding Penalties

There are two types of penalties that you can be slapped with by Google that will require action toward SEO penalty recovery:

Algorithm: A drop in ranking when Google’s own algorithms change in Panda or Penguin. Panda picks up on subpar content, excessive ads, and slow traffic speed. Penguin addresses issues that ping the negative radar - including over-using links, over-optimization of content, and links from sketchy sources that lead back to your site.

Manual: This is a penalty where live human reviewers assess whether or not your site is spam-filled or deserves to be penalized. This is a more severe type of penalty to be taken seriously and uses human intelligence.

Identifying and Understanding the Penalties

Any type of penalty you’ve received will appear in Google webmaster tools dash, and Manual penalties will be clear and present in messages. Algorithm penalties require reviews of recent changes to Google’s own algorithms and how your site’s ranking has suffered as a result. Manual penalties are the ones to watch out for, and require more complicated action.

Action to Be Taken

Identify culprits that contain too many links to your site, or links that originate from suspicious, low ranked sites that are identified as being spam-oriented. You'll need to go back and ask for the links to be removed from the sites, which can be time consuming. Using SEO professionals to do this is much easier than trying to compile the information yourself and conduct the step-by-step process of contacting individual webmasters, in addition to addressing other problems. After you’ve made the fix, you’ll need to submit a request to Google for reconsideration.

By taking these simple steps, the penalty can be resolved. It’s all about closely monitoring the status of your Google metrics and activity, and ensuring that you’re paying close attention to how your site ranking is performing. Regardless of how large your website is, no one can afford to ignore Google results in this day and age.

In today’s content rich and search driven world, refining SEO strategies to tap into your niche market in specific ways is absolutely essential. You can no longer depend solely on blind PPC or display ads to drive traffic to your site. It’s time to re-think how you approach SEO and site traffic.

The Power of Specificity and Not Popularity

Long-tail keywords are phrases specifically honed to address the needs of your customers, and work on the ability to be highly specialized. This cuts back on the cost of using broad, general keywords that are more expensive. If customers in California are searching for specific services, for example, then using an SEO company in LA to help refine these tactics is a good idea. Whether your business is a brick and mortar enterprise and you want to make the most of local search terms, or you’re based purely online, knowing your customers’ specific needs is key.

Content Beyond the Metrics

A powerful way to attract the attention of your customers is to become a thought leader in your industry. This can be achieved through writing guest blog posts posted to influential sites, networking and collaborating with other industry leaders, and even applying for awards or official types of recognition within your field. This improves visibility as well as establishing your voice as a market authority. Distinguishing yourself beyond metrics using organic, original content and efforts to stand out through recognition will help your business appear in more search results in a favorable manner.

Ramp Up Your Social Media

People not only look to Google and web content as they search for services and products, but also spend significant amounts of time on social media. Packing your social media accounts with useful content that customers will gravitate toward, as well as information relevant to services people are seeking out, is essential to improving SEO strategies. You can devise these approaches yourself or you can hire an SEO consulting company that will work within your budget to create optimized, specially tailored social content.

These simple suggestions can help refine your current SEO strategies, but there’s much more that can be done. Keeping up on trends happening in your industry and monitoring your metrics can help you go the distance and see more traffic to your site.